Barriers to the effective use of technology in education:

Taking the problem of not physically having the said technology in the first place, due to a lack of financial resource, as a given barrier. I think there can be quite a few further factors that can cause technology, when in place, to be used ineffectively in education. The following are some of the barriers I have experienced as a student and more recently on my present teaching placement.

The technology not being fit for purpose:

With regard to the equipment available as an undergraduate in my second year, "essential requirements" (Maier and Warren, 2000) such as the computers we had access to weren’t fit for purpose. As students we had to use Photoshop and Illustrator for aspects of are work but the computers were so old and slow that it made doing even the simplest task frustrating. We would be told to turn them on an hour before “the lesson” started as they literally took this long to boot up and you could forget about doing any kind of complex rendering unless you wanted to spend hours sat there waiting doing what on a reasonably good computer would take seconds or at worst minutes.  This seriously handicapped the development of the students concerned with regard to their digital skillset which as an artist in 2012 was no small thing including the preparation of files for laser cutting and water jet cutting various materials including glass.

Insufficient knowledge or an unwillingness to share that knowledge:

If the educator’s knowledge of the technology being used is poor it is likely to have a negative impact on the students learning. During the same period as mentioned I found that the educator was unable to answer many questions about the software we had to use and we were very much just left to sort of coast along with very little direction. This resulted in the students who had the most prior knowledge essentially teaching the students who had little or none and themselves learning nothing in the classes. On the whole this approach led to little innovation from the majority of the students and the potential of the digital aspect of their studies was essentially wasted, a view supported by (Leask, 2001) who states "When teachers disengage from the the use of technology and leave pupils to use it and teach each other how to use it, the potential for enhancing learning drops away steeply". I think sometimes if an educator is not confident or has gaps in their knowledge they can sometime be unwilling to engage for fear of that being exposed as they feel they shouldn’t. I can understand this point of view but I think ultimately it’s a bad way of dealing with the problem. We all continue to learn and increase are knowledge base but to have an expectation to know everything about a subject is unrealistic and arrogant and even more so when it come to ICT as it is continually developing and requires keeping up to date with the relevant aspects of it. That said I feel that when a student does ask me something I don’t know I’m ok saying that I don’t know but that I’ll make a priority of finding out for when I see them next, I think they appreciate the honesty. 

Different educators with contradicting approaches:

This was something that happened to me whilst on placement. As I’ve mentioned above previously the digital visual studies lessons were quite unstructured and relied more on the students just trying to work it out with minimal instruction. When I designed the scheme of work for this year I chose to have a more structured type of lesson very much like the style of the second micro lesson I did for the PCET, though much longer being three hours. This included as a main element a concise handout with detailed instructions, which included relevant screen shots of exactly what they should be seeing in front of them, in this case the Windows OS version of the software as the students would be working on PCs. Two thirds of the way through this scheme of work it was necessary for the previous educator to take one of the classes for which they now prepared a handout. However this handout was done in very different style. The screen shots weren’t very helpful and they were from a mac so they looked different which is ok if you can tell the difference but you have to take in to account that this group of students has a wide spectrum of abilities. There ages range from about 20 -70, a few of the students have some experience of Photoshop a couple of them almost need help turning the computer on, there are quite a few dyslexic students and a couple with quite significant learning disabilities and some mental health so a real range. As it goes they have all done really well and been able to rise to the demand of the exercises but with some of the students that change in approach of the educator for just one lesson had a negative impact on there learning experience. (Reece & Walker, 2007)

Timetabling and apportioning appropriate time:

In previous years the digital visual studies module was just tacked on to the end of the life drawing class. This meant that students, after standing and concentrating in silence for two hours life drawing would then have a third hour where they are expected to learn (teach themselves to use) Photoshop and illustrator. Obviously this didn’t work very well with regard to the digital work for several reasons. Their ability to concentrate and learn new complicated software after two hours of concentrating on life drawing was pretty impaired. Also when combined with the fact that the life drawing was very structured and focused by the educator and then the same educator stood back more with the digital drawing maybe fostered an attitude that the digital aspect was not very important. Fortunately this year things seem to be turning around and the timetable was changed with digital and life drawing being separated which has made a considerable difference and there is a definite sense that the digital module is exactly just that which make the students take it much more seriously.

All of the above mentioned barriers have mainly been removed this year and the contrast in the students output has been significant, I feel the educator’s own knowledge of the technology is paramount to it successful incorporation.

Maier, P & Warren, A., 2000. Integrating Technology in learning and teaching:A practical guide for educators. Kogan Page Limited.

Leask, M.,2001. issues in teaching using ICT. RoutledgeFalmer.

Reece, l. & Walker, S., 2007. Teaching, Training and Learning: A Practical Guide. 6th Revised ed.
s..:Business Education Publishers Limited.